Basically many land value single tax theorist say that all taxes on
labor and capital should end and replaced with a single tax on the
unimproved value of land. Henry George wrote down much of the theory
in the late 19 century in his book Progress and Poverty, he suggested
collecting per year the great majority of the economics rental value
of land, he suggested the owner could keep 10% of the unimproved
value for managing it. Often the rental value is based on the average
interest rate times the unimproved value. Say your home is valued at
230,000 dollars which is about the median in the US, say the
unimproved land value is 25% of that, then the unimproved value would
be 57,500 dollars, if the assement value for tax purposes is 90% of
that, then it would be 51,750 dollars, if the average interest rate
is 7% your single and only tax would be 3,622.50 cents no matter if
your income was 5,000 a year or 5 million a year, no sales tax, no
social security tax, no income tax, no beer tax, no whisky tax, no
gas tax, no licence plate fees, no custom duties above inspection
costs at least, no cigarette tax, no tax on your home, fence,
swimming pool, driveway payment, store building, equipment and
supplies or factory buildings, equipment or product, only a tax on
the value of land that the owner did not improve. Not a bad deal for
the vast majority of people and businesses. Some land tax theorist
suggest offering a lien to people or businesess than can not afford
to pay the tax, the lien could be collect upon sale or tranfered to
an heir upon an owners death. That would be be much better than what
most local governments offer these days, if they offer a lien at all
it appears it is usually only for seniors or
veterns.
Many land tax theorist base their ethical stand on Lockes
leaving as good and enough when taking land out of the commons.
Personally I agree that if someone encloses land that is being
commonly used he owes compensation to the other users if he did not
leave as good and enough but I do not think this prniciple of
compensation should apply to outsiders or those who had not being
using the land plus I think if a person finds land not used or
claimed and puts it to use he does not owe anyone
compensation.
One of the main problems of how the land value tax
fiqure value is not taking to account that often if not most of the
time most of the land value is created by labor and capital, natural
value is usually a small percentage of the value. True the owner of
the apprased plot did not create this " unimproved value" but others
did. Really the land value tax theorist usually do take into account
the improvement by others but they tend to assume it was created by
government or the community, yet a minority of land owners in an area
can create most of the land value in the area, possibly in some cases
only 1 landowner. For example say a private hospital or a private
shopping mall builds on a small portion of the land area in a given
area and the land value more than doubles in the area. Was that value
mostly created by nature, by roads, water systems, bridges etc? No
those things were there before. Was the value mostly created by the
total community or all of the land owners? No it was created by 1
land owner. Does the land tax theorist think all the surrounding
land owners should pay rent to the hospital or shopping mall? I doubt
it, so why should a landowner pay rent to a community or the
government?
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